Bike Week events (19th - 27thJune)

A veritable Biketastic feast of events for Bike Week (June 19th - 27th)

Friday 18th. Adult Social Ride
Start Bike Week off with a relaxed cycle ridevisiting pubs along the canal to Sale and returning via Sale Water Park and Jackson's Boat.

Starting from the Spread Eagle pub, Wilbraham Road, Chorlton at 6pm.
Contact Dick on 07749 421254  for more details.   www.cycle-routes.org/fallowfieldloopline/


19th - 27th June. GM Cycle Commute Challenge

Get on your bike for the GM Cycle Commute Challenge 2010 and be in with a chance to win some great prizes!

The Cycle Commute challenge is simple, all you have to do is cycle to and from your place of work/study at least once during Bike Week (19th – 27th June),  record your cycle trip(s) and you could win a cycle computer, cycle training or bike maintenance sessions and £100 vouchers that can be spent at your local cycle shop.

Sunday 20th.  Trafford Bike Festival. Worthington Park (12 noon - 5pm)

A bike festival aimed at the whole family, in conjunction with Sale Lions annual fete.  Activities include:
Bike smoothie maker
Roller racing event
Guided cycle rides
Mountain bike skills session
Trans Pennine Trail and Bridgewater Way displays
Cyling information, maps and accessories
Displays of vintage and unusual bikes
Dr Bike workshop

Contact Paul Beckett (Trafford Cycling Officer for more details)  Email: Paul.Beckett@trafford.gov.uk



Sunday 20th Manchester Day Parade

Cycle related activities throughout the day. More details available here.

Monday 21st. Maintenance Monday

Many of us have bicycles we could use but they just need a little TLC to get them roadworthy and fit to cycle.

To help you get your bicycle fit for Bike Week, several cycle stores in Greater Manchester have organised "Maintenance Monday" events.







Tuesday 22nd. Bike to Work Day (Albert Square, Manchester City Centre. 8am – 3pm)

  Including a Bike Friday on a Tuesday! Cycle in and earn your free Bike breakfast! Bike Maintenance, servicing, cleaning, information, advice, freebies and even have-a-go activities! Bike skills from 11.30am-2.30pm
Open to all!)

Thursday 24th. Greater Manchester Cycling Campaign - Social Ride

Ride starts at 5.30pm in Albert Square, and going to the Airport via Route 6.
More details from honsec@gmcc.ac.uk

Friday 25th.  Bike Friday

Join in with these ‘led rides’ from locations in Bury, Manchester, Salford and Trafford. Rides finish at Exchange Street, Corporation Street.

All participants can get a free Dr Bike maintenance check and  ‘Coffee and Cake’ at the Titchy Coffee Co.

Route details and times from the Bike Friday website.






Friday 25th. Critical Mass

Mass cycle ride on the last Friday of every month.
Starts 6pm at Central Library, Manchester.

Saturday 26th. Bike Fabulous

A showcase of fashionable and functional clothing plus accessories.
Products designed for cycling in style and high street brands combined for versatile looks.

Manchester Arndale. Activities and competitions throughout the day, catwalk show at 14:00.

More details available here or join the Facebook group.

To find details of other events near you try the following sites: Bike Week 2010,  CycleGM,  Love Your Bike.org and Manchester Bike Week facebook group.

The CarbonCycle: Get on your bike to help tackle climate change

The CarbonCycle project was officially launched on Thursday 3rd June at the Co-operative Group offices in Manchester. Supported by the City Council's Carbon Innovation Fund, the CarbonCycle project is designed to deliver long-term carbon reductions through inspiring and empowering the people of Manchester to increase the number of journeys being made by bicycle. The project will run for 12 months and will be working with businesses both large and small. Up to 240 people will receive free cycle training, which is aimed at improving cyclists’ safety and confidence when riding in busy urban areas such as Manchester City Centre. The plan is to encourage non-cyclists or people returning to cycling to commute by bike instead of car, or to combine cycling with public transport. At the launch event, BikeRight! provided a bike road show and demonstrated a range of commuter bikes for The Co-operative staff to try out, including Bromptons and GoCycle electric bikes. A qualified mechanic demonstrated basic maintenance skills and Co-op staff could get get advice and information on cycling – from purchasing a new bike to identifying good cycle routes to work.

From a business perspective, research has shown that regular cyclists are better timekeepers, are healthier, have less time off sick and have a more positive attitude to stress due to the ‘happy hormones’ that are released during exercise. 

Further details about the CarbonCycle project can be found on the BikeRight!sweb site www.bikeright.co.uk/carboncycle  

Any organisation wanting to join the project can register on-line via the web site. Companies have to be based within the Manchester City Council boundary in order to take part and be prepared to sign up to ‘Manchester A Certain Future’ action plan.

21st Anniversary for the Trans Pennine Trail

This year sees the 21^st Anniversary of the Trans Pennine Trail (TPT).  To celebrate this wonderful achievement there is a Anniversary Baton Relay from all five gateways to the Trail culminating in a Celebration Festival at the mid-point of the Trail.

With the Trans Pennine Trail crossing through Trafford, Manchester and Stockport there will be an afternoon of celebration events on Tuesday 15th June.  The timetable is (something) like this:

2.30pm at Jacksons Boat - the Baton will handed on from Trafford to Manchester

Pupils from Brookburn Primary School will then walk with the Baton to Chorlton Water Park.

From there a Trans Pennine Trail ranger will set off at 3.30pm and cycle with the Baton to Simons Bridge where it will be handed over to Stockport for the next leg of the journey.

For more details of the Manchester events please contact

Sophie Armstrong, School Travel Coordinator. Tel: 0161 234 3562 or via s.armstrong5@manchester.gov.uk

Nice book but could do with a bit more advice and information on cycling !

The second edition of Chris Goodall's book, How to live a low-carbon life, is now available and has been described by the 10:10 campaign as one of "the most detailed guide to low-carbon living, helping you get to 10% and beyond."

There is certainly a lot of very useful information packed into the books' 300 pages.  But it would have been nice if the author could have included a little more detail about the role that increased levels of cycling could play in reducing transport sector CO2 emissions and helping (re)build human scale and healthier communities. 

In response to requests from readers of the first edition for more information on cycling, page 171 of the 2nd edition manages the following.... "After the first edition of this book was published I got several letters from people complaining about the lack of attention paid to cycling. Cycling enables a person to get around a town or city faster than in a car or a bus, and almost as fast as a train in some circumstances. A well-maintained cycle needs only about a third as much energy as a persn walking for every mile covered. So even though a cycling commuter will generally need to eat more to replace the energy lost when on a bike, it still makes excellent sense to ride everywhere you can. Of course, cycling is great for improving basic fitness and, I suspect, helps make people more mentally alert when at work. I've never met a lazy cyclist."

And thats it.... six whole sentences to describe one of the most efficient forms of transport available for commuter and utility journeys up to 5 miles - a journey distance that accounts for approximately 50% of all the journeys currently made by car in Greater Manchester. No references, no "where to go for more information" section, just six relatively short sentences.

So if you are looking for helpful information on how to encourage more people to cycle to have fun, save money, get around quicker, feel healthier, reduce air pollution and CO2 emissions we suggest you buy another book.

Meanwhile, if you cycle to work twice a month that would reduce your travel to work related CO2 emissions by 10% (assuming you don't already commute to work by bike !)

Happy cycling!

 

Global Car-free Cities Conference in York (28th June -1st July)

In June, academics, city planners and campaigners from all over the world will take part in the week-long Towards Carfree Cities IX conference in York.

The Towards Carfree Cities conference is a global gathering which aims to develop practical alternatives to car-dependent lifestyles and car-dominated cities. It is an annual forum for cutting-edge, radical thinking in transport policy and car-free development. Up to 200 participants from around the world are expected, primarily from the UK and Europe.

The conference series are run by the World Carfree Network, based in the Czech capital, Prague and is being hosted by Carfree UK from 28 June to 1 July 2010.  The conference will be looking at the carfree vision of cities – where amenities are within walking distances, and space is reallocated from transport back to shared community use. The question being posed is: how can we get there from here? 

One of the York organisers, Randall Ghent, said "The plan to build new eco-towns is almost a distraction. Most people in the UK live in cities built long before the car became supreme. We need a plan to fix our cities, and put them back on the human scale."

Registration and conference programme details are available here.